The network requested public records from 2009-14 to investigate men's basketball and football players from 10 major universities — FSU, Florida, Auburn, Michigan State, Missouri, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Texas A&M and Wisconsin — to determine how often crimes involving college athletes are prosecuted and what factors influence them.

Of the 10 schools, UF had the highest number of athletes linked to criminal activity and FSU ranked second.

The Gators had 80 athletes named in connection with than 100 crimes from 2009-14, spanning the tenures of former coaches Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp.

ESPN reported 56 percent of the cases were not prosecuted or dropped while 28 percent of college-age males in Gainesville linked to criminal investigations had cases that were not prosecuted during the same period of time.

The report noted former UF football player Ronald Powell was pulled over once in Gainesville shortly after he was drafted by the Saints and police found cocaine in his car, but officers opted not to arrest him because the address listed on Powell's license is a known drug house and officers suspected the drugs did not belong to him. ESPN also noted another incident in October 2014 when Powell was given a trespassing warning for threatening the owner of a local store for not giving him free items. Gainesville police reported the incident to UF officials.

While it's common to assume local police go look the other way when athletes are involved, the ESPN report noted better legal representation, intervention by athletic department officials acting in support of athletes and witnesses' fear of accusing athletes of crimes all hinder the criminal prosecution of athletes.

"It's the fault of the athletes, it's the fault of the victims, it's the fault of society, it's the fault of the media, because everyone paints this picture and holds athletes up on a pedestal sometimes and we all are making them invincible," Gainesville police spokesman Ben Tobias told ESPN. "The fans are making them invincible, and the victims themselves, they look up to them at the same time. So to think that they can be victimized by this person is sometimes a reach for them."